Ashes and Ruins

Ashes and Ruins begins in the home of an affluent Jewish German family in 1935. The protagonist, Clara, came from a large and very wealthy family, and her eight siblings have relocated to countries all over the world. Clara herself is a concert-level pianist and violinist who has never had to do any housework until the Nazis put the net over Jewish lives and, one by one, they are stripped of all their accustomed privileges.

Clara’s father arranges her marriage, and never knows how badly his daughter is treated. The husband brings his cousin to live with them, claiming it’s to help Clara with the work after the birth of their third child but really as his mistress. It is a long and miserable marriage for Clara; but when her husband suffers a sudden death, she finds the backbone she’d hidden for years and finally takes matters into her own hands.

In order to avoid the atrocities toward Jews in Germany, Clara’s oldest son immigrates to the United States; and later, her daughter Edith immigrates to England. While there, Edith marries and has a baby, and later brings her husband and baby to visit her mother. Clara is respectful to her new son-in-law and over-the-moon in love with her grandbaby.

Upon leaving, with her husband and baby waiting in the cab, Edith hastily returns to the door, hugs her mother and makes a request. She wants Clara to find and destroy the letters she saved from her first love, which she hid in the attic before immigrating to England. Edith fears that if they were to fall into Nazi hands, Charlie would be arrested and killed.

Clara finds the box her daughter described and inside are not only a stack of blue letters neatly tied together with a blue ribbon but also a diary. She spends the next several days by the fire reading her daughter’s diary and feeling that she is meeting her own daughter for the first time. She’d never met the man of her daughter’s young years, and squirms at some of the letters. The intensity of their young love was something Clara never experienced. 

Meanwhile, Clara’s young teenage son remains in Germany, but seldom leaves their house. He no longer goes to school because of the Nazi brownshirts have turned all his lifelong friends against hm. He awaits immigration papers for England and the reader wonders if they will arrive before the Nazis find him.

But we are more worried for Clara as the curtain drops in Germany, with good reason. Her relationship with Edith could help her—or break her.

This is an extremely well-researched and written story. The character’s flaws make them more real. I highly recommend Ashes and Ruins. It’s one of the best novels I’ve read about that time period in Germany and England.